Architecture Book – Why Do Architects Wear Black?

Remember my previous post on architect’s dress code? Was it a coincident or an urban myth that architects prefer black? Cordula Rau has the answer in her little black book titled ‘Why Do Architects Wear Black?’

“Because they believe they need to stand out from the bourgeois society whence they come if they are to be real ‘artists’.”

“Because they wish to appear interesting + appear to be Existentialists.”

“Black means you can’t really go wrong and you don’t have to change that often,”

An industry manager who left his white-blue, silver-shimmering world of car bodywork and dove into the pitch-black, mysterious world of architecture for the first time during a competition asked me one day: “Ms Rau, why do architects actually wear black?” Although I was wearing black and I am an architect I didn’t have a spontaneous answer, so I responded: “Ask the other architects!” That was in 2001, and it is why this small book came to be. I have asked the question at an international level and whenever it seems appropriate ever since. The sometimes amusing and other times programmatic or hair-splitting answers I have received over the last seven years are listed chronologically in this little black volume. Read, and please, don’t ask me why architects wear black! – Cordula Rau, 22. 02. 2008

This is not serious journalism, if you happened to have a friend, partner or family members who’s an architect then by all means get them this great book, it’s a bit overpriced for the content but it is fun reading! If you’re a bookworm, here is another great book – ‘101 Thing I Learned in Architecture School’